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from the chief railway station, through the narrow, crooked, 

 crowded, Japanese streets. On week days tickets of admission 

 to the garden are on sale at a little grocery shop across the street, 

 price four sen (2 cents). On Sundays the regular ticket office is 

 open, and the price is raised to five sen. 



There is a broad gravel walk leading from the entrance up 

 a gentle hill to the Botanical Institute, which has its name printed 

 above the door in English. The path is bordered with small 

 lawns and a variety of coniferous and deciduous trees, mostly of 

 familiar temperate zone genera. The efifect is broken near the 

 Institute building by a group of cycads, C. revoluta, while imme- 

 diately by the building is a group of tall palms, Trachycarpns 

 Fortunei, with Yucca filamentosa behind. Farther along stands 

 a group of grass-trees, Cordyline indivisa. These and other 

 tropical or subtropical plants scattered through the garden 

 indicate that Tokio is in a semitropical climate, notwithstanding 

 its fairly high latitude. The cultivation of tea and rice shows 

 the same thing, while the frequent solitary banana plants at the 

 edge of the villages remind one of a still warmer climate. 



The Institute building is a rather extensive one-story tile-roof 

 structure, not at all Japanese in its architecture. When we 

 entered, students were working in various rooms, some with 

 fresh plants, others with microscopes. On the wall a program 

 was posted in English, giving a schedule of all the classes, 

 including physiology, ecology, and systematic botany. In 

 America their laboratory facilities would be called poor, but the 

 quantity and quality of the research which they produce show 

 that it is at least adequate. 



Outside the building, one enters their so-called European 

 garden, with straight gravel paths, trees bordering the walks in 

 rows, and herbaceous plants in geometrical beds. It does look 

 somewhat like some American parks, but if, while in it, one could 

 imagine himself back in America, the illusion would be at orice 

 broken by the group of tall grass-trees in the background. The 

 principal walk is lined with the Japanese cherry trees, Prunus 

 yeddoensis. These trees are larger than the American cultivated 

 species, but have the typical cherry-like spreading branches and 



